My social feeds are full of people claiming that Trump’s campaign is imploding. That Kamala’s got the biggest crowds ever. That Vance has weird interactions with people.
But the one thing that I keep seeing over and over again is crowd size claims.
I’ve been aware of crowd size estimates since Glenn Beck held his tea-party rally back in the 00s. People were showing overhead shots and then doing counts.
The numbers reported by the right were much larger than the number reported by the left. Taking them from the same images.
Then there were the images from Watt’s Mommy’s Demand group. For years, it looked like they had massive crowds outside the NRA annual meeting.
Then we were able to see photos from gun owners. The crowds were staged to look very dense, but there were barely a 100 people there.
Before Kamala was installed, the media was constantly going on about how Trump’s crowds weren’t really that big.
We would see photos seeming to show a rally half full. Then we would find out that the images were taken before Trump got there or after he left.
Once Kamala was installed, suddenly the left was much more concerned with crowd sizes. They started to post images of the Kamala crowds with all their joy and excitement of getting to vote for a person who has received zero votes.
Then I started to notice something, the images, and videos posted by Kamala’s people didn’t have the numbers that her team was claiming.
“Look at this massive line of people to greet the annotated one!”. And there is maybe a block of people, barely 2 people deep.
As a child, I watched Nixon’s inauguration parade. It was January in D.C. It was cold. My brother and I were bundled up in our winter coats. There were people lining both sides of the street, shoved up on one another 4 or 5 people deep. All to get a glimpse of our new President.
That isn’t what I am seeing in the Kamala videos, posted by her people.
Here is my point, the right is poking fun at Kamala’s crowd sizes based on her videos and images. The left has to take their videos and images that are of questionable integrity to attempt to show small crowds at Trump events.
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5 responses to “Crowd Measuring Contest”
bottom line? STOP looking at fake news outlets.. stop watching cnn cbs nbc abc msnbc…. all of them. work on getting people off thier dead ass and go vote … then work on cleaning local liberals out of your local gubmint… We the People have been uninvolved in politics too long, work, family, life ya know.. but we have to get more involved. “fight for what you want now, or fight AGAINST what you don’t want later”…
It is a campaign. Exaggerations happen.
What bothers me is the media participation. Instead of reporting the news, they are actively supporting a candidate.
Crowd size is an estimation, always has been. Even in well controlled/known areas, it is near impossible to know the crowd size. Nothing short of collecting tickets will settle the score.
However…
There is no way Harris is getting the crowds that Trump is getting. When the candidate is on stage, take a look at the crowd. It is obvious.
What bothers me is the media participation. Instead of reporting the news, they are actively supporting a candidate.
Between fawning over, lobbing softball questions, and actively defending “Que-Mala” (look it up and laugh), and being openly hostile to Trump and his campaign, someone in Congress should open an investigation into campaign finance violations.
Sure, the media isn’t making any monetary contributions for or against either candidate, but all the pro-Harris and anti-Trump coverage equates to advertising, which they’re providing free of charge. That advertising has a monetary value, is considered a “contribution-in-kind”, and there’s a statutory limit to how much value they can contribute. (Why, it’s almost as if the law was written to NOT allow the wealthy to bypass it by donating resources other than money! Imagine that!)
I’m 100% sure they’ve already surpassed that limit, and we still have nearly two months left until Election Day.
In another context, suppose a wealthy Leftist (say, Bloomberg) doesn’t contribute a lot of cash money to Everytown, but instead provides an office space for their headquarters, purchases signs and posters, furnishes buses to transport volunteers to rallies, and hires caterers for meals. The office space, signs/posters, buses, and food all have a real monetary value, which he and they may or may not be reporting. Sure, he only wrote a check for $100k, but how much value is he really contributing? $250k? $500k? $1M?
It’s the same with the media. The last I heard, reporting on the Harris-Walz campaign is trending ~85% positive, while reporting on Trump-Vance is ~90% negative. This local and national pro-Harris/anti-Trump advertising has a real monetary value which they are not reporting to the IRS or FEC.
Hey, House Republicans! Are you listening?
Several years ago, I attended a pro-gun-rights rally at the my State’s Capitol building. Knowing ahead of time how the news outlets would portray the crowd size — by taking close-cropped photos from to cut out most of the crowd and downplay the attendance — I moved to a spot behind the podium and took a few photos facing out.
True to form, the paper said a couple hundred and showed their photo where you could see about two dozen. My photo showed easily over a thousand, split between the area in front of the podium — with limited sidewalk space — and the “capital mall” area across the street (which is another way the news outlets downplay attendance; they always have the option of only showing the sidewalk standing room and not the much-larger mall area).
I never tried to get an exact number, but an approximate nose-count per square inch, times square inches of crowd shown, plus a guess about the “wings” which were out of frame, came out to ~1,300-1,400 — far higher than the “couple hundred” the news cited.
All These Matching Buses Leaving Kamala Harris’ NH Rally Just Scream ‘Genuine Grassroots Supporters’ I can’t link to the tweet right now but it purports to show 12 matching charter buses that the “grassroots supporters” came in on. It dovetails with the time her crew kicked the patrons out of a local restaurant so that they could fill it with actors to act as spontaneous “supporters”